Hitherto, various studies have been made about shortening of processing time for silver halide color photographic materials. For example, it is known to increase the temperature or pH of a developer or use a development accelerator for shortening a development time. Also, as a method of shortening a desilvering step, methods of adding various accelerators, etc., are known.
For shortening the processing time for silver halide color photographic materials, it is effective to shorten a water washing step in addition to shortening of the aforesaid development step and desilvering step. A conventionally employed water washing time is generally from 2 to 3 minutes.
Now, in the case of shortening a water washing step, it is inevitable that washing of bleach components and fix components becomes insufficient. In this case, the storage stability of color images of processing color photographic materials is also reduced. Hitherto, it has been attempted to incorporate various fading preventing agents in color photographic materials for improving the storage stability of color images as described, for example, in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,816,028, 3,457,079, 3,698,909, 30764,337, and 3,700,455, etc., but these fading preventing agents are ineffective when the water washing time in photographic processing for color photographic material is shorter than 90 seconds. In other words, if washing of iron complexes present in a bleach or a bleach fix is insufficient, there occurs a problem that the remaining iron complexes react with remaining couplers to increase yellow stains during storing color image in the dark.
Also, in the case of long continuous processing, yellow and/or magenta stains which are considered to be mainly caused by the oxidation product of a color developing agent attach to color photographic materials and when the water washing time is short as described in this invention, washing of the aforesaid attached stains becomes insufficient to leave these stains after processing as a new trouble.
On the other hand, in a water washing step for photographic processing, a process of greatly saving water has been recently proposed mainly for saving water resources and omitting of plumbing of washing. These techniques are disclosed in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 70549/81, 132146/82, 8543/82, 18631/83, 184343/84, 184345/84, and 14834/83, etc. (the term "OPI" as used herein means an "unexamined published application").
However, it has now been found that when a water washing step of a shortened period of time as in this invention is practiced using the above-described water saving step, the washing effect in the water washing step becomes insufficient and the above-described stain problem occurred after processing and/or after a lapse of time becomes larger.